Still favoring boys over girls....

Richard Saunders took this photo and wrote on Facebook:

Advert on a Hualien to Taitung train advising pregnant women to reject undergoing gender identification of their fetus (having a baby girl was traditionally considered much less desireable than a boy). I'm flabbergasted that in modern Taiwan anyone still needs reminding that having a baby girl is a wonderful event.

Women slightly outnumber men in Taiwan, but like everything in Taiwan, there is a regional imbalance that favors Taipei:

The sex ratio — the number of males per 100 females — was at its lowest in Taipei at 92.1 and at its highest in outlying Lienchiang County at 133.6.

Good to see the government out addressing that.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Fujen Dorm issue: Can we have IQ tests for DPP officials, please?

Old motorcycle, old house.

At Fujen University, the Catholic University outside of Taipei, the female students finally started a protest this week to put an end to the sexist and authoritarian practice of curfews for the female dorm. A group calling itself the FJU Cinderellas had staged the protest, which included one student going on a hunger strike -- nicely timed, since the end of the semester is only a couple of weeks away. The university agreed to stop the practice.

Regrettably, this urgent need to control female sexuality is not just a practice of the Catholic schools, but is widespread in Taiwan universities:

Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) cited a student survey as saying that 26 percent of universities and colleges in Taiwan have gender discrimination regulations in their dorm management, with Fu Jen being one of them.

The students highlighted an important issue that appeared to be missing in the legislative discussion:

Liao, a senior student studying public health, began the hunger strike May 30. She said one more person would join her for the strike each day until the school answered their calls, which include abolishing the curfew system for girls' dorms, installing electronic door control devices, and lifting a roll call at the beginning of the curfew.

Other demands are to clearly define the authority of the nuns and girls' dorm keepers, and holding elections to select students to be in charge of dorm affairs.

The student leader argued that the curfew is not just a problem of gender equality, but also affects the rights of dorm tenants, most of whom are from rural areas and financially disadvantaged, who cannot afford a privately rented room.

What she means is that people from money can afford to rent a room and come and go as they please. People from the working class must accept controls. Gender equity issues are frequently class issues as well.

Sadly, according to the Taipei Times, a DPP legislator urked up:

When asked by DPP Legislator Hsu Chih-chieh (許智傑) how he would respond to students if he were the dean of Fu Jen, Pan said that he would probably issue identification cards to female students, granting them unlimited access to their dormitories via a card reader, provided that the time at which the students leave and return to their dormitories is recorded and forwarded to their parents.

A longtime observer asked in an email discussion group a question that is already starting to occur to many minds: at what point will Tsai Ing-wen start being held accountable for the remarks of the slothful and regressive elements of the DPP, who are rolling along unchecked.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Kingdom of Women

Reuters: China's women struggle for power

One fifth of Chinese NPC parliamentarians are female, higher than the 17 percent of the U.S. Congress who are women. But China's parliament comes under the firm thumb of the Communist Party, where real power lies.

All nine members of the Party's top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, who marked the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day on Sunday, are men.

At Ketagalan media: Gwen Wang on Taiwan's legislature:

On gender balance, the percentage of women in the Legislature has increased to 38 per cent (43 seats), from 34 per cent (38 seats) in the previous Legislature. The outcome of the legislative race is described by Dr. Nathan Batto as “a victory for diversity”, with Taiwan now ranking 10th in the world in the proportion of women in its national legislature. The steady increase in Taiwanese women’s representation in the parliament shows that women are gradually gaining power in Taiwan’s political institutions.

Me, a couple of weeks ago...

The KMT Chairmanship struggle is still a two woman race between Hung Hsiu-chu, the reactionary mainlander former presidential candidate, and Huang Min-hui, a Taiwanese faction politician from a family with long service to the KMT. Remarkable to think that if Chen Chu succeeds Tsai Ing-wen to the Chairmanship of the DPP, the president and heads of both major political parties will be female come May. This demonstrates not merely female power but continuity of female power, since the previous party heads will have both been female.

From Emma Jinhua Teng, An Island of Women: The discourse of gender in Qing travel writing about Taiwan, 2010.

Seventeeth- and eighteenth-century Chinese travellers to the island colony of Taiwan almost invariably remarked that indigenous custom gave precedence to the female sex. 'The savages value woman and undervalue man' became a commonplace of Qing ethnographic writing about the indigenous peoples of the island, known as fan (savages) to the Chinese. As an inversion of the Confucian patriarchal maxim 'value man and undervalue woman', this pithy expression indexed the alterity of Taiwan to the Chinese who colonized the island in 1683. Encountering a land with female tribal heads, uxorilocal-residence marriage, and matrilineal inheritance, Chinese travellers perhaps thought that they had stumbled upon the mythical Kingdom of Women -- the Chinese equivalent of Amazon. As in the Kingdom of Women, it seemed, here women took the lead, and men followed. The anomalous gender roles of the indigenous peoples thus became one of the most popular topics in Qing travel writing about Taiwan...

But people say that the influence of Taiwan aborigines on the local Han is insignificant.

ADDED: And of course, pre-1945 Taiwan was 25% Hakka, with different attitudes toward the role and status of women then the Hoklo.
_______________________
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!